Searching for the spark: Chris Waters on the plight of Yorkshire CCC

As he looked out towards the historic backdrop of Lumley Castle, while addressing the media in the Riverside pavilion, the Yorkshire head coach was clearly feeling it as he more or less repeated his words of the previous week when his side scraped a draw at home to Glamorgan.

“We’re doing a lot of good things, but that win is eluding us,” he said. “I strongly believe that it’s not far away, but we have to make it happen… In order to win, you have to create the opportunity first, and at least we’re putting ourselves in positions to win… Everybody is trying, there’s no doubt about that, and you can’t fault the effort.” And so on.

Yorkshire’s next two games are against the sides directly above them in the table - Derbyshire and Gloucestershire, games that you feel must surely elicit (weather permitting) at least one victory. If not, Yorkshire could go on to eclipse their longest winless sequence in the 133-year history of the Championship, set in 2008-09, when they went 20 matches without success.

Sport, it is often said, goes in cycles, and the maxim that no side has a divine right to win anything is a maxim for a reason. No county, not even one of Yorkshire’s size and stature, can simply expect to look down on its rivals as opposed to propping them all up, the present sad state of affairs.

It is one that brings into sharp focus the inescapable reality that the entire organisation, from boardroom to dressing room, has been utterly devastated by the events that have befallen it in recent times. To suggest there is no connection would be disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst; it is unquestionably impacting on the team’s performances.

Sports journalists will tell you that it is always easy to cover a club when it is winning, less so when it is losing; in Yorkshire’s case, a more concerning statistic than 17 without a win is that they have lost eight of their past 13 matches, a record that demands some difficult, if required intuition.

The perception of one who has seen the games and knows something of the wider crisis is that the spark has gone - and understandably so.

Where once there was a pervading sense of pride in representing Yorkshire, what is there now? A touch of embarrassment, perhaps? Or maybe you don’t puff your chest out quite as much as you used to. It cannot be easy for the players; anyone would be affected by what they have lived through.

Where once there was a deep connection to the club’s history, its lineage of great players, its Sirius-like brightness in the cricketing galaxy, there is now a sense of something not quite right, of something gone, of something that may never come back - at least not yet.

The players are indeed trying, as Gibson said. The coaches - himself included - are trying, too. The organisation per se is trying to move forward but there is so much baggage, so many unanswered questions, so many inconsistencies, injustices, ghosts, memories, that it really is no surprise at all to see Yorkshire languishing where they are now; in fact, it is exactly what you would expect to happen given everything that has happened.

Some might wonder if the players are good enough. On paper, Yorkshire have a good side. There were seven internationals in their ranks at Chester-le-Street, men who have performed at the peak of their sport.

Yorkshire drove that game and should have won, but towards the finish you knew they were never going to win because that spark, that indefinable something that gels and galvanises, has not been there, a factor to which Gibson unintentionally alluded when he bemoaned his team’s failure to win key moments.

When all is well, the small margins, the one-percenters, become easier to find; that Yorkshire are putting themselves in winning positions but not capitalising suggests the absence of the spark, the magical, elusive, missing ingredient.

It is this, as much as anything, that Yorkshire need to find – and perhaps the arrival of a new captain in Shan Masood will be the catalyst; the Pakistani has the air of a fine man as well as a fine cricketer, a figurehead behind whom the club can unite.

The spark exists not only within a club, of course, but also within the people who support and love a club. Again, the evidence would suggest that the flame has diluted for some and gone out for others; crowds have been down at Headingley, and some have lost their love for the sport entirely, another tragic consequence.

But Yorkshire is still a great club, a great institution, a great symbol of Yorkshire itself.

The events that have decimated the club can never be erased, or the damage undone, but perhaps, in time, the spark can return.